Microsoft is apparently throwing around some of the money it didn't spend on buying Yahoo! or Facebook this year. Steve Ballmer recently pulled $486 million out of his wallet to acquire Greenfield Online, the German company that runs price comparison and shopping portal Ciao.
The move could help Microsoft make inroads with European internet users. Ciao receives over 26 million unique visitors each month. Greenfield also operates an online sales and market research division, but apparently Microsoft isn't as interested in that business. PaidContent reports that the company plans to sell off the research arm and just hang onto Ciao.
Sure, Microsoft could have just pumped a few million dollars into making its own shopping site more useable, but when you've got mountains of cash lying around, sometimes it's easier to just buy an already popular service.
We have two bits of probably unrelated news about digital music in Europe to share today. First up, Apple has announced plans to establish uniform pricing for iTunes downloads throughout Europe. Right now, UK residents are paying more for their music than customers in any other country in Europe.
The reason for that is because Apple has to pay record labels more money to distribute music in the UK than in other countries, but Apple is hoping to force those labels to lower their rates.
In other news, British regulators are considering legalizing CD ripping. That's right, up until now, it's been considered illegal to buy a CD, stick it in your computer and create MP3s that you can put on an iPod or other portable media player in the UK. Of course, everyone does it anyway, which is probably why Britain is thinking about legalizing the act.
Do these two announcements have anything to do with one another? Probably not. But we can't help but ponder that the only way to legally load up your iPod in Europe right now is to buy digital music online from stores like iTunes. If there's a handful of people who are steadfastly avoiding ripping CDs for fear of spending the rest of their natural lives in jail, any change in that law could cause them to give up iTunes. And Apple could be trying to lower its prices in an effort to keep those paying customers.
After nine years, Microsoft has given up its fight against European Union regulators. Essentially, the EU says Microsoft is a monopoly, and as such should take certain measures to give consumers more options and open up its source code a tiny bit to enable interoperability with third party software.
Microsoft has decided not to appeal the latest EU court ruling, which means the company will fork over $705 million which had been sitting in an escrow account since since the fine was levied in 2004.
Other highlights of the agreement include:
Microsoft will allow third party companies to license non-patented technology to ensure interoperability with Windows
Companies will only have to pay a one-time €10,000 fee for that intellectual property, not an ongoing royalty
In return, the EU is removing its hit from Microsoft's head. In other words, no more fines against the company until the next time it tries to do something incredibly anti-competitive, like (hypothetically) engineering an operating system that plays well with Microsoft Office but not so well with competing software suites like OpenOffice.org.
A few months back we realized that we don't know Kentucky from Kansas thanks to Statetris, an online game that combines geography with Tetris. At the time, all we could do is bungle the placement of US states. But now that Statetris has gone international, we realize just how little we know about world geography.
There are new versions of Statetris for Africa, Europe, France, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK, and for some reason, the state of South Carolina.
Game play is pretty much the same for each version. Just drop geographical locations into the appropriate place on the map. Depending on which version you're playing, the goal may be to put states, provinces, or countries in the proper location. Play often enough and you might just be able to figure out how to find Latvia on a map.
There's good news and bad news for Microsoft today. The bad news is that the European Court of First Instance has upheld a 2004 court decision finding Microsoft guilty of violating antitrust laws. The god news is that if anyone can afford a $690 million fine and 80% of court costs, it's Bill Gates. But somehow we doubt he'll see it that way.
The Court upheld portions of the 2004 ruling that ordered Microsoft to share information with other software developers in order to make sure their programs were compatible with Microsoft's operating systems and applications. Microsoft also needs to have a version of Windows that does not come with Windows Media Player pre-loaded.
The Court did throw out one portion of the earlier ruling. A lower court had ruling had established an independent trustee to monitor Microsoft, but the Court of First Instance found this step unnecessary.
Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith released a statement saying that he is still reviewing the decision. He does say the company will "comply with our obligations under European law," and implies that Microsoft may still appeal today's decision.
Leading photo blogging website Fotolog, has been bought up by the leading Europen interactive company Hi Media based in Paris, for a little less than the competition. But does it really matter when you can monetize the service better?
Fox acquired Photobucket for about $250 million earlier this year, and this deal with Fotolog was only for about $90 million. Sure Fox has deep pockets, but Hi Media might have scored big with this one. Now they only have to compete with Fox. The plans are to better monetize the current incoming traffic, as well as work a publishing element into the mix. So in the end, if Hi Media can easily make back the $90 million spent quicker than Photobucket, guess who is really in the lead. Look out for some interesting developments with Fotolog in the near future.
YouTube, the top destination online for videos, was once lacking in two areas, localized content and accessibility. The website served only as a platform for users that spoke English and views from a PC. That was then.
Enter now. As we spoke about in the latest Googleholic, YouTube launched localized versions of its popular video sharing service throughout Europe. The new versions of the site are targeted at users in Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, UK, and the U.S. At the moment, the video content is pulled from YouTube's U.S. based site, but as time goes on more local content will get added to the database.
This new local market proves to visitors that YouTube is serious about making their service as accessible as possible. YouTube Chad Hurley made the announcement at a press conference in Paris that the big thing for YouTube in 2007 is access. This comes only a few days after the launch of YouTube for mobile devices, whereby users can now view video content on mobile phones through a special portal, and an announcement about Apple providing YouTube content through the new Apple TV box.
In this time of either punking off YouTube, or being its best friend, Jalipo is erring on the side of competition for professionally generated content.
Jalipo lets content owners offer channels through its online marketplace for TV and Video. Jalipo uses J:Credits which is a unique way for owners of content that might not be in a position to give content away, the ability to sell views of it. It's a pay as you watch type system where some content owner's price videos at a per-minute rate. It can be expensive, but it is quality content. There are also some territory restrictions where certain videos might not be available in certain areas due to local rights restrictions. Jalipo sits at the forefront of the new online video revolution right alongside the likes of Joost.
As an alternative to the YouTube's of the world, Jalipo has partnered with, and currently providing content from the BBC World, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera English, and looking to sign some deals to show live sports, concerts, and independent films. The CEO is a former president of Sony Europe, and it looks like his connections and drive are pushing Jalipo into slowly becoming a strong player in the online video marketplace.
Ask has been running some new controversial ads in the UK recently informing people about Google's huge success and the impact it could have.
The campaign is trying to get across that 75% of all searches performed in the UK are done through Google, thus limiting the sources that people are getting information from.
Ask is trying to ramp up its search engine market in Europe by creating a tiny rebellious market through the use of a non branded campaign encompassing radio, street stunts, TV, and web. Most ads and materials do not even mention Ask, they just direct the audience to an Information Revolution website which encourages people to "Join the Revolution."
It's a very interesting and unique approach, and Google welcomes the competition, but has Ask gone a little far by creating a "Revolution" to gain a bit of market share in Europe?
Check out a video of the ads and commercials after the jump...
Google has failed to win the Gmail name in a trademark battle in Europe. The name has been owned for over six years by a German entrepreneur that has founded a service called GMail, a same day mail delivery service. A body that is responsible for European community trademarks rejected the appeal from Google. Google had apparently tried to buy the rights for $250,000 but were shut down and saw to be threatening, aggressive, and unfaithful by the entrepreneur. Shortly after, the entrepreneur also mentioned that he also owned trademarks for Switzerland, Norway, and Monaco. Google had already had issues with the Gmail name in the UK, where a financial analytical software company settled with them out of court. Looks like Google will have to rename their Gmail email service to Google Mail all across Europe.
According to French analytics company Xiti Monitor, Firefox is no longer a niche player in Europe, with 23.2% of European web surfers using the open source browser, up from 19.4% in April. More telling are some of the individual countries' figures, with Firefox holding about a third of the browser share in six countries including Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, and about 40% in Finland and Slovenia. In the southern hemisphere, Australiasia is a 23.4% Firefox region, but here in North America it holds just 14.5% of the market, according to Xiti.
Here at Download Squad things look a bit different, however--if Site Meter is to be believed, 48% of you use Internet Explorer, followed by 46% Firefox faithful, with Konqueror (3%), Safari (2%), and Opera (1%) bringing up the rear.
Microsoft is doing some connecting with leading edge suppliers in Europe to boost its Live service. Soon 375 millions people are going to be able to IM each other using mobiles or PC's though a deal with Orange in France. The new service will be called Orange Messenger by Windows Live. The application will essentially allow Orange customers to either use the IM tool online, or on their mobile devices to connect to other Windows Live Messenger users. Microsoft and Orange will be joining users in Spain and the UK as well in the near future. Microsoft chose to work with Orange because they are the leading edge supplier in mobile communications in Europe, and there are not many leading edge communication developments being made in the US.
Google Dublin hosted the finals for the Code Jam Europe 2006. 10,000 registrants competed in Three rounds, with 50 finalists being flow to Dublin for the major final competition. 15 Countries were represented in the finals.
Earlier this year, Google had Code Jams in China and India. Another Code Jam is set for this Fall. Tomasz Czajka won the €2500 grand prize, and Petr Mitricheve from Russia took home second, with Roman Elizarov from Russia taking third, both grabbing €1000 each.
You can ensure that these winners will be watched, or have offers from Google, and other high end tech companies in the upcoming days. Google has some video of the CodeJam on Google Video. Good show!
It's taken two years for this to happen, but ODF has finally been approved as
a standard format by the International Organization for Standardization. The OpenDocument Format is now poised to
be readily adopted throughout Europe, as the EU recognizes the formats recognized by the ISO. BetaNews has the story,
plus a great quote from ODF Alliance executive Director Mario Marcich, "We believe access to public records and
essential services should never be restricted to users of a particular brand of software or computer platform."
Word to that.
Google Maps
has received a significant update in the form of much more road and street map coverage for Europe. The coverage is far
from total, with some regions getting comprehensive street maps and others getting only major roads or less, and many
areas still lack address search or door-to-door driving directions, but it's a vast improvement for European users. Google Maps Mania
predicts, and I have to agree, that this will pave the way for a whole new crop of European maps mashups.
It's taken two years for this to happen, but 
